Bettina Wegner

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Bettina Wegner (1974)

Bettina Helene Wegner (born November 4, 1947 in West Berlin ) is a German songwriter and poet . Her best-known song is Kinder (Are So Little Hands) from 1976, which - sung by Joan Baez - also found international distribution.

Life

After the GDR was founded, her parents - convinced communists - moved with her from the West Berlin district of Lichterfelde to East Berlin . She learned the profession of a library worker and began studying at the drama school in Berlin in 1966 . In 1966 she was a co-founder of the Hootenanny Club . Since the original principle that anyone could perform their lyrics and songs uncensored on stage was abandoned, they left the group when the Hootenanny Club was renamed the October Club and placed under the FDJ .

After she had written and distributed leaflets against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact states in Czechoslovakia in connection with the Prague Spring in 1968 with catchphrases such as “Long live red Prague!” Or “Hoch Dubcek !”, She was de-registered , arrested and sentenced to one year and seven months' imprisonment for “ subversive agitation ”. The experiences with censorship and in pre- trial detention that she had to face when her first child Benjamin, whom she had together with Thomas Brasch , had just been born, was to shape her attitude and, above all, her songs. After probation in production , she attended evening school, caught up with the Abitur and trained as a singer at the Central Studio for Entertainment Art in 1971/72 . Since then she has been living freelance.

A series of events ( Eintopp, Kramladen ) together with Klaus Schlesinger , with whom Bettina Wegner was married from 1970 to 1982, were banned by government agencies. After public protest against Wolf Biermann's expatriation in 1976, her performance opportunities were increasingly curtailed; she was spied on and pressured. Her manager at the time, Katharina Harich, who was also the manager of the humorous song group MTS , enabled her to appear as an insider tip during this time, because the posters now read: "MTS and singer". Werner Sellhorn also helped , with whom she had a “harmless” sounding program: “ Kurt Tucholsky and Songs from Today”. The concerts were still overcrowded, because word of mouth was very effective in the GDR when it came to prohibited literature or music. She was also able to give concerts in some churches, for example in the Samaritan Church in East Berlin, which is known for oppositional events .

When she suddenly became known in the West through a " Kennzeichen D " broadcast by Dirk Sager in 1978, she had the opportunity to publish her first long-playing record in the West on CBS . It was a recording of a concert in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien . On her first studio LP on CBS she was accompanied by musicians from the rock band Nervous Germans . This gave rise to opportunities that were unthinkable in the GDR. She was now able to compensate for her professional ban in the GDR with appearances in the Federal Republic of Germany , Austria , Belgium and Switzerland , since she was allowed to travel to the West as a “foreign exchange broker”. However, this was a common method of the GDR government to get rid of well-known but unpleasant artists: after initiating an investigation "on suspicion of customs and foreign exchange offenses", Bettina Wegner, as a GDR citizen, was faced with the choice of going to prison or going to prison in 1983 to be expatriated. Thereupon she left the GDR for West Berlin. This loss of home and communist ideals became the main themes of her songs in the 1980s.

From 1974 until her expatriation, she was observed by the Ministry for State Security as a “ hostile-negative person ” in the operational process “clerk” for subversive agitation under Section 106 of the GDR Criminal Code.

In 1988 Bettina Wegner had a nine-month relationship with Oskar Lafontaine , who was then Prime Minister of the Saarland. As a singer-songwriter she performed with Joan Baez , Konstantin Wecker and Angelo Branduardi, among others . The Munich concert guitarist Peter Meier continued to develop new musical impulses through Wecker from 1985 to 1992 with Bettina Wegner as soloist and arranger. He also composed the music for some of her texts such as Das Lied vom Messer, Waffenlos, The Prince is gone and she knew it. From 1992 she continued to give regular successful concerts with her new accompanying trio from L'art de passage and especially with Karsten Troyke . In 1996, Bettina Wegner was the first to receive the Thuringian Cabaret Award in Meiningen for her program “She hath knew” . She released several CDs but slowly disappeared from media such as television and radio.

After more than 30 years of touring and making records, Bettina Wegner temporarily said goodbye to her audience in 2007 with a farewell tour. The reason for this were health reasons, but not only these: “There is haggling like an aging whore. Of course I have my price (...) It has to come to an end, then being a singer is no longer my job, even if I keep singing - benefit or special occasions for example (...) ”(from the Berliner Zeitung of January 27, 2007).

Bettina Wegner has three children.

Awards

Works

Singles

  • 1980: Children (Are Such Little Hands) / Little Zaches / The Fireman
  • 1981: No Woman, No Cry / Jesus
  • 1987: I don't want / For my abandoned friends

LPs

  • 1976: Participation in the Amiga long-playing record Lied aus dem neue Tag (with the titles When my songs are no longer correct and Oh, if I had come into this world as a man )
  • 1979: Are Such Little Hands (CBS)
  • 1980: When my songs are no longer right
  • 1982: I'm sad anyway
  • 1983: Don't cry, but scream (with Konstantin Wecker)
  • 1985: homesickness for home (with Konstantin Wecker)
  • 1987: A stone's throw from Germany to Germany

CDs

  • 1992: She knew it
  • 1997: The Songs Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.3 (3 CDs)
  • 1998: Paths (with Karsten Troyke )
  • 2000: The people from my street (with Inge Heym )
  • 2001: Everything I wish (with Karsten Troyke)
  • 2003: My brother ... Jewish songs (with Karsten Troyke)
  • 2004: love songs (double CD)
  • 2007: The Farewell Tour (with Karsten Troyke, double CD)
  • 2017: What I had to say - 120 songs from 50 years (5 CDs)

Books

  • When my songs are no longer right With a foreword by Sarah Kirsch , Rowohlt Taschenbuch 4399, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-499-14399-2 .
  • I'm sad anyway. Songs and poems, Rowohlt Taschenbuch 5004, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1982, ISBN 3-499-15004-2 .
  • Don't cry, but scream. Songs and poems (together with Claudia Hennes), Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-7632-2736-9 .
  • When I was just twenty. Songs and poems from East and West in Nachdichtungen, Rowohlt Taschenbuch 5699, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-499-15699-7 .
  • A stone's throw from Germany to Germany. Songs and poems, Rowohlt Taschenbuch 5906, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-499-15906-6 .
  • It is so little. Songs, texts, notes (with Peter Meier and Rainer Lindner), self-published by Lindner, Gemünden 1991, ISBN 3-9800398-3-8 .
  • I have a room in nobody's house. Songs and poems, structure paperback 1247, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-7466-1247-0 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Bettina Wegner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Wensierski, DER SPIEGEL: GDR resistance icon: songwriter Bettina Wegner - DER SPIEGEL - history. Retrieved June 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Bettina Wegner: When my songs are no longer correct. Rowohlt 1979
  3. ↑ Bettina Wegner . Project youth opposition in the GDR of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , accessed on October 21, 2016.
  4. ↑ Stephan Suschke: Loved by women, monitored by the Stasi and reported by my own father. The poet Thomas Brasch and the year 1968 . Berliner Zeitung , January 26, 2008, accessed on October 21, 2016.
    Susanne Schädlich: "Since I stepped on German soil ..." . Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , October 3, 2013, accessed on October 21, 2016 (pdf; 44 kB).
  5. ↑ Joachim Walther: Security area literature: writers and state security in the German Democratic Republic (= analyzes and documents of the Federal Commissioner for the records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, vol. 6). Links-Verlag, Berlin, 2nd edition, 1998, ISBN 978-3-86284-042-7 , p. 371, accessed on October 21, 2016.
  6. ↑ Barbara Bollwahn: "I prayed for Erich Mielke for a year" . Interview with Bettina Wegner. In: the daily newspaper , March 3, 2012.
  7. ↑ Bettina Wegner honored for her life's work. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . March 11, 2020, accessed June 29, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Wegner, Bettina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wegner, Bettina Helene (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German songwriter and poet
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH West Berlin